This not-to-be-avoided change
So as to change together:
But had you asked me to allow
That you could ever grow
Less amiable than you are now,--
Emphatically--No.

But--to be serious--if you care
To know how I shall really bear
This much-discussed rejection,
I answer you. As feeling men
Behave, in best romances, when
You outrage their affection;--
With that gesticulatory woe,
By which, as melodramas show,
Despair is indicated;
Enforced by all the liquid grief
Which hugest pocket-handkerchief
Has ever simulated;
And when, arrived so far, you say
In tragic accents, "Go,"
Then, Lydia, then ... I still shall stay,
And firmly answer--No.


MARK'S BABY
[Sidenote: _Mark Twain_]

"Mark, one day, was found at home, in his library, dandling upon his
knee, with every appearance of fond 'parientness,' the young Twain--so